The lion king returns to the Great Karoo

Last seen in this arid region nearly 200 years ago, the big cats are back. Brian Jackman was there to greet them

There she reclined, lithe limbs outstretched, soaking up the South African sun – and from the moment she sat up and looked at me, I knew it was love at first sight. I had flown 2,000 miles for this moment and wasn’t disappointed. After all, it is not every day that you are invited to meet a very special lion.

To those who know South Africa only through visits to the Kruger or the boutique game parks rks of the Sabi Sands, Samara Private Game

Reserve is a revelation. n. Wrapped around by gaunt hog-backed backed mountains, its 70,000 acres of arid bushveld lie in the e heart of the Great Karoo, a malaria-free laria-free area the size of Germany ny that has long held a special place ce in the heart of many South Africans for its desolate beauty and pioneering history.

To the south, only a couple of hours’ drive away lies the Garden Route, the tourist highway that hugs the e coast from Cape Town n to Port Elizabeth. But for most visitors the Great Karoo – that ancient land of dinosaur bones and Khoisan cave paintings – remains a mystery.

It was the Khoisan who called it the Karoo – the “Dry Place where there is nothing”. Seen through the trembling desert air, its shadowy kloofs and rippling summits dissolve into shimmering swirls of burnt sienna and iceberg blue, and so profound is its all-embracing silence that it is even possible for scientists to record the eerie sounds of our planet rolling in space on its journey around the sun.

Two hundred years ago, the Great Karoo was a haven for wildlife. Vast herds of eland and Cape buffalo roamed the grasslands. Black rhinos thrived in its thorny thickets. Herds of elephants meandered up from the coast to feed on the green mountain slopes and every year was marked by the spectacle of the springbok migration migration, when up to a million of these fleet-fo fleet-footed antelop antelopes merged into a si single herd three mi miles wide, leaving c clouds of dust in their w wake that took two wee weeks to settle.

Above all, one animal h held sway over the Karoo Karoo. This was the majes majestic Cape lion, a fearsom fearsome carnivore whose widesp widespread presence and formidable reputation made travel b by ox-wagon impossible at night. Today, t the wandering herds are no more. Fences and guns stopp stopped the spri springbok in its trac tracks and the Cap Cape lion has not

FEELING AT HOMETitus and Sikelele, main; white rhinos, opposite